Waiting
by Kiamirei
Summary: A fairly short piece. When wars end, not all people are able to adjust, and when peace comes, not all people are given the freedom that they crave.


Waiting  
  
By: Kiamirei  
  
~ I'm not claiming to own Gundam Wing. Please review this, or email me! Thank you!  
  
The walls were a grayish-green color, and sunlight streamed down upon the yellow tile in the hallway through a single, barred window. The air in the hallway was damp as a single figure strode down its length, making no noise at all. Brackish water collected in corners and in places where there were indentations and spaces in the cracking tile. Eventually he reached a cell at the very end. It was heavily locked, and he had no key, but that didn't matter; he picked the lock easily. The figure surveyed the contents of the cell with dead eyes, and hesitated only briefly before walking inside. Shadows filled the small room, as the window faced away from the sun and the only light was the one in the hallway. Violet eyes met emerald, and a pale face grinned briefly. He rested his head against the wall and sat crossed-legged in the cot, playing with the end of a long chestnut braid. The visitor took a seat in a small stool in a corner of the room.  
  
"They tell me you escaped your cell," the visitor said. "That's the third time this week."  
  
"Aa."  
  
"You know you're here for a reason."  
  
"Aa…. They stopped trying different locks a month ago; I can get past all of them and they know it. They tried handcuffs and different restraints but I broke through every one of them. So they bring tranquilizer guns. I hate it here. It's worse than a jail."  
  
"Soo desu."  
  
"But one day they're going to mess up, and I'll be out of here."  
  
"They'll put you right back in again."  
  
"They can try. But I doubt they'll catch me. After all, you aren't going to be helping them, are you?" He chuckled. No, the other one would not help them. But neither would the visitor help him, either.  
  
"You don't have it anymore; you can't run from them." A fleeting memory of a mobile suit with a color blacker than the emptiness of space. The memory flared briefly and was silent.  
  
"I can try."  
  
"Aa."  
  
They sat in silence, then, remembering past years. Flashes of light, and the smell of burnt metal. A green beam scythe cutting through enemies without mercy, an obsidian mobile suit blotting out the sun, twirling the scythe. Explosions. A white mobile suit, flecked with orange and loaded with missiles and a machine gun. This one does not have a beam weapon, but has a short knife that is used as a last resort. More explosions. A "Perfect Soldier" rescuing a battered prisoner from a cell not completely unlike the current one. A blonde shooting the white and orange mobile suit with a beam cannon. The Perfect Soldier once said the blonde had cried his eyes out countless times afterwards, when he thought no one could see or hear. Another boy, proclaiming his duty to deal out justice and advocating ultimate strength. This one's name brought up images of dragons and of knights and warriors. Old enemies that still like to haunt dreams. The cold of space. The heat of fire. Pain of gunshot wounds. Blood and its metallic taste. The cries of the damned. The screams of the dying. Smoke. More blood. Occasional moments of happiness that hurt rather than helped.  
  
Violet eyes blinked. Somewhere across the hall, water dripped slowly from a pipe, adding to the liquid on the floor.  
  
"You always come," he said softly to the visitor. "Without fail. Why do you continue to come?"  
  
"Why not?"  
  
"Someday I'm going to get out of here."  
  
"Will you be ready?"  
  
"Probably not. But if I stay here any longer I'm going to go crazy."  
  
"You're already crazy."  
  
"So are you."  
  
"True."  
  
"But sane enough not to let yourself get taken."  
  
"Also true."  
  
More silence.  
  
"Let me braid your bangs."  
  
The visitor gave him funny look.  
  
"If it bothers you that much then never mind."  
  
"No, it's alright. If you really want to you can braid them."  
  
The visitor walked over and he braided the visitor's bangs, pleased with himself that he had gotten the visitor to use a facial expression, even if the voice was still dead.  
  
"You're braiding my bangs."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"You really are insane."  
  
"You knew that from the beginning. Besides, you're letting me braid them. What does that make you?"  
  
"Also insane. But you knew that from the beginning also."  
  
Silence. It stretched across the darkness, but just knowing that the visitor was there comforted him.  
  
"We were great," he said to the visitor. "Even if it landed us here –and you visiting us here-, we were great. We were always great. All of us."  
  
"Yes."  
  
"I want to go back to those times."  
  
"No you don't."  
  
"Someday I'm going to get out of here."  
  
"Yes, you will."  
  
"How long do you think I'll have to run before they give up and let me stay out?"  
  
"It doesn't matter."  
  
"It does. I'd rather be in a prison cell than in this place. I don't want them to catch me."  
  
"You can stay with my sister and I."  
  
"I'm sure your sister will be overjoyed to have me with you." Sarcasm.  
  
"She won't mind."  
  
"How kind." Another grin. "I'll have to remember." An offer coming from the visitor was not to be refused lightly. He didn't intend to refuse.  
  
"You're too crazy to remember," the visitor said dryly.  
  
"Never thought I'd live to see the day that you make a feeble attempt at a joke. I can now die happy."  
  
"When did I say I was trying to joke?"  
  
The visitor gave a small smile, and he chalked that up with his other small victories in getting the visitor to show human emotion. So far he was doing better with getting the so-called Perfect Soldier to show emotion even though it was mainly anger (that one got annoyed easily, but not as easily or as frequently as the one he called Justice Boy, all in a day's work for Shinigami) but he had made progress with the visitor and that's what counted most. The visitor had never gotten mad in his sight before, so he worked on general emotions. He didn't want to be around the visitor when all the pent up rage finally showed. Not for all the money in the world, assuming that he cared about money, which he didn't. The blonde was amused a lot of the time, but he didn't really need any work. The blond was human enough already. Maybe too human. The blonde didn't visit much, only once for every twenty times the visitor came, but he was not offended. The normal one had no spare time managing the most important business on the colony he lived on, and the public, along with the media, constantly following the blonde around, did not have a kind eye.  
  
Amusement was better to see on the visitor, the Perfect Soldier, or Justice Boy. It turned their faces into something serene, something beautiful. Sometimes he thought that he was the sanest out of all of them, except of course for the normal one, the blonde. He didn't dwell on the normal one often because the blond didn't need worrying about. The normal one worried about the rest of them. Of course, whenever he thought he was sane, he remembered that in actuality he was the one who was hanging furthest off of the edge of sanity.  
  
"Someday I'm going to get out of here."  
  
"You're obsessing."  
  
"I know. But I can't stand it here."  
  
"I understand."  
  
"No you don't."  
  
"Yes I do. I'm an expert on what it feels like to be caged."  
  
The visitor remembered his childhood, one filled with soldiers and blood and battle and being nameless and homeless and friendless and without family and moving to the colonies only to live in a box in the slums of a dirty city in a dirty colony filled with dirty people who built machines that were built to destroy and liked to manipulate lives. It had been a different sort of cage, then, but one that was just as confining. He had broken out of that cage in refusing the original mission, the one called Operation Meteor, but experience taught him that one was never free and never would be; instead, one simply moves from cage to cage to cage to cage to cage to cage to cage.  
  
"Okay, maybe you do."  
  
"When you do get out, find me. If you're really ready to be out, you can get a job with us," the visitor said. Some cages were more preferable than others.  
  
"And if not?"  
  
"We'll take care of you until you are."  
  
"Thank you. That means a lot to me."  
  
"You're welcome."  
  
Just then he and the visitor heard the Perfect Soldier and Justice Boy arguing from their different cells at the very front of the long hallway.  
  
"You're so weak!"  
  
"Omae o korosu!"  
  
"Weakling!"  
  
"Omae o korosu!"  
  
"Nataku would hate you! You're weak!"  
  
"Omae o korosu!"  
  
Streams of curses in both Mandarin and Cantonese filled the hallway, as did their appropriate responses in Japanese.  
  
They heard guards and nurses go to the cells to try to calm down the two, but in a moment dull thuds were heard and Justice Boy and the Perfect Soldier continued arguing with each other, unfazed by the momentary lapse. Apparently, the guards and nurses had been knocked out. Or killed. None of them but the normal one had any particular reverence for life.  
  
Maybe they used their food trays, he thought. I warned them not to give them anything that could be used as a weapon. Not even plastic forks. But they didn't listen, because I'm crazy. Shinigami knows all, fools. You should have listened.  
  
Emerald eyes flicked in their direction, then came back to the cell floor. The visitor wanted to go, but was visiting with this companion at the moment and supposed that the other two could wait. The companion picked up on this.  
  
"You'd better go. No one will get them to stop if you don't; you're the only one they listen to."  
  
"What do you do when I'm not here?"  
  
"They argue until they lose their voices."  
  
"I'll go." The visitor got up, hiding his surprise that he was he the only one who could placate the two.  
  
"See ya, Trowa."  
  
"Au revoir, Duo. I'll be waiting for you."  
  
"You were always the best." He meant it.  
  
"That's not true…" He also meant it.  
  
The visitor smiled softly and left. Duo chuckled to himself quietly. Trowa had forgotten his bangs were still braided. Yes, they were all crazy, except for Quatre. But maybe, just maybe, they would be all right someday, and they could share memories in peace and harmony. But until then, he would plan his next, perhaps final, escape. He would wait, like Trowa promised to wait, dreaming his crazy dreams and scheming his crazy schemes. If Heero and Wufei promised to behave, he would set them free, too. He chuckled to himself, listening to Trowa calm down the Perfect Soldier and Justice Boy. It was only a matter of time. 


End file.
